Thursday, December 29, 2011

The latest video to become a viral sensation, the environmentally-charged My Water's On Fire Tonight (The Fracking Song), has been making a critical and commercial name for itself online, as it explains the controversial new natural drilling technique, fracking. The gas drilling practice is said to contaminate drinking water and air.

Adam Sakellarides and Lisa Rucker, a graphic designer and editor at the Los Angeles-based production company Pictures in a Row, animated, designed and edited the video for The Fracking Song. The video, which has already garnered over 212,000 views on YouTube, has been rated as Time Magazine's Number Two Most Creative Video of 2011. It was runner-up to a video created by Director Spike Jonze.

Sakellarides and Rucker decided to work on The Fracking Song video to help their friend, David Holmes, a graduate student in NYU's Studio 20, who was working on the project. Motivated by Holmes' lyrics, Sakellarides and Rucker used animation to create a Schoolhouse Rock-inspired video describing fracking in less than two-and-a-half weeks.

The graphic designer and editor graciously spoke about what inspired them to work on The Fracking Song over the phone from Los Angeles. Sakellarides and Rucker also spoke about what their reaction was after finding out their video placed so highly on Time Magazine's Most Creative Video list, and what they hope viewers will take away from The Fracking Song.

Written by: Karen Benaradello

Question (Q): Your video, My Water's On Fire Tonight (The Fracking Song), has been rated as Time Magazine's Number Two Most Creative Video of 2011. What was your reaction when you found out that the video has placed so high on the list?

Lisa Rucker (LR): I was pretty surprised.

Adam Sakellarides (AS): I was kind of amazed. I was like, wow, I finally did something that was worthy of attention on the Internet, besides all my tweeting, which really isn't all that worthy.

Q: The Fracking Song placed behind a video created by Spike Jonze. What was the feeling like, knowing that your video is being compared to Spike's work?

AS: Personally, I think it's better than Spike Jonze's work. No, I'm only kidding. (laughs) I'm pretty amazed that we were able to get a couple of hundred thousand hits on YouTube. It's really difficult if you've ever actually tried to do it.

LR: Yeah, just to be on the list at all was pretty amazing. Just to be so close to a video that was so good, it was pretty awesome.